maeve_the_red

First off: this is a dance festival. It's not just the beepy electronic stuff, although every known form of that is available, because there's also folk (in various forms), lots of ska, reggae and dub, some blues, and a smattering of World tunes However if hearing a complicated rhythm does not instil any need to move with the beat, then Boomtown is not for you.

Secondly, drugs. At night I sometimes felt that D and I were the only people not off our faces. However, given the choice of being surrounded by confused but happy (sometimes VERY happy) people vs drunk (and possibly loud/belligerent/threatening) people, I'll go for the caners every time. Boomtown know people will get wrecked, and apply a 'cane responsibly' policy, with free and anonymous drug testing, useful advice ('It's a marathon not a sprint. Eat food. Drink water. Try to get some sleep. Please.') and hazard marking tape bearing the helpful slogan 'Pace Yourself'.

The festival did not start well for me, and for most of the other punters. Due to a combination of heavy rain leading to a delay in opening the gates and the strict (if largely ineffectual) drug search policy, it took hours to get onto the site. Six hours for me, the last four of which I was standing up and shuffling forward every few minutes, dragging my rucksack and other gear with it and to add insult to injury, about four and a half hours in a wasp stung me; given the press I was in, had I had any sort of reaction (aside from swearing and swatting the little sod) I'd have been in trouble. As a bonus complication Dave was arriving later, and by a different gate, so although I left home shortly after 9am, it was nearly midnight before we were met up. An inauspicious start, but not something to we let ruin the rest of the festival.

At the official opening ceremony the next day we got to see Toots and the Maytals (as missed at WOMAD), on the biggest purpose-built reggae stage in Europe, which looks like an Aztec temple. Ah yes, the scale of the thing. Boomtown is BIG – with 65K attendees and a massive site spread across two whole valleys in the South Downs National Park, it's second biggest UK festival after Glastonbury. It's a temporary, purpose-built party city made up of distinct, themed districts, many of which could have passed for Hollywood film sets (if only I could master how to post pictures to DW … if you follow me on Facebook, there's an album of piccies there). Scattered through these districts are more stages that it's possible to visit over a weekend, varying in size from the Lion's Den Reggae stage, Robotika DJ stage (built from shipping containers) and most massive of all, the Bang-Hai Towers dance stage through to some indoor 'stages' only able to hold a dozen or so gyrating punters: in the SF themed Dstrkt 5 we danced in the 'micro-rave' – a tiny nightclub done up like the inside of a microwave oven; in Old Town we enjoyed some subversive live Grime (it's a type of modern rap music y'know) in 'Granny's Front Room' complete with standard lamps and worn sofas. Everywhere you looked the place had been built with care and love and attention to detail: I loved the blue plaque in the Town Centre, dedicated to 'Nicholas Boom, founder of our fair city. Gone but not forgotten.'

But there's more than music – and optional intoxication – to Boomtown. I mentioned personas in my last post and D and I have actual characters who live in specified districts; as it turned out we didn't get to do much with them, but we did interact with what (in gaming terms) one might call NPCs including haranguing representatives of the evil and all pervasive Bang-Hai media crop, who are trying to take over, homogenise and package the entire city – never! Other weirdness happened in passing: in the Wild West district we had to stand aside while the sheriff and his deputy rode past on actual horses; in the colourful slums of Barrio Loco we were beckoned into a garish back room where I had my face painted and D had his fortune told; on the edge of Chinatown, at Bang-Hai studios, we joined the audience of a gameshow which featured punters (or possibly actors) eating banana split off of a glitter-encrusted woman with coke spoons; there was baby-oil wrestling in the backstreets of Mayfair; and, our favourite of all, Rimski's Yard, where you can trade half-baked ideas and broken dreams for strong tea, freeform insults, knitting lessons, a go at on the massage machine and the chance to 'Punch a Trump' (very popular, that was). The festival even puts out its own daily newspaper. The final afternoon saw a 'Swing Party Takeover/Riot' in Mayfair, complete with temporary speaker stacks/barricades and a bank robbery, after which Boomtown dollars were thrown around liberally; Dave now has some on his hat.

It was a bit much at times, especially the full-on dance madness of the Downtown districts after dark. In retrospect, although we were right to camp for the full immersive experience, I hope to get space in the quiet/family area next time, as we were surrounded by people who partied way harder than we're capable of these days, and not much sleep was had by anyone. We did find two quiet spaces to withdraw to when we needed to chill. One was Lost Tribes, one of half a dozen trance music stages actually set up in the woods; in this case the stage was built partly of branches, overlooked by a guardian totem owl in NW Native American style, with the Amerindian hangings in the trees billowing around, and making the trees look like they were sailing up the hill when the wind caught them; in addition there were lots of seats and soft sand underfoot and a distinct chilled flavour to the trance available here (as opposed to the frenetic high BPM of the Psy Forest). We saw some great acts to sway gently to here, including old favourites Ozric Tentacles (now onto their second generation!). Our other sanctuary was Whistlers' Green, which was a whole folk/world/hippie festival on top of the hill, nearly half the size of Wickham by itself. Here you could listen to live blues and get the best veggie breakfast on site at Coyote Moon, have a sauna, and do a chocolate workshop – this last was lovely, shambolic and informative with touches of New Age woo; also, plenty of free samples. The main stage in Whistlers' Green was called the Windmill as it had two windmills built in – plus a working waterwheel - and the copse of trees in the centre of the district had been filled with flowery bowers, hammocks, a sand pit (!) and an bizarre but melodic giant, electric, upright xylophone. Even here Boomtown's glorious madness intruded in its own way: on Sunday, I was waylaid on my way for a much-needed massage, firstly by the Police Rave Unit – 'This is a designated Rave area; Dance towards the van in a disorderly manner'; then a bunch of mutants on stilts, presumably escapees from Dstrkt 5, and finally an actual carnival, smaller than the WOMAD one but with Notting Hill level of costumes.

weather, fashion and culinary notes

There was some mud, but by this stage in the summer I'd stopped noticing it. My nose got sunburnt.

Food-wise there was a good selection – the crumpet stall was a hit, especially their peanut butter and banana special – though this isn't a festival/city with a great emphasis on food, as many of its denizens were not much interested in ingesting solids. The longest queue I saw was at the milkshake stall. I realised I'd got into the spirit of things in my own small way when, on day two, I had a continental breakfast in the tent, consisting of chocolate brioche sticks and merlot from my wine box.

When it comes to costume, at Boomtown people go full out. Glitter beards and disco leggings were the least of it. Efforts ranged from the exquisite – butterfly wings, often threaded with LEDs so they lit up at night - though the dodgy/erotic – a number of people eschewed actual clothing in favour of lots of glitter – through the usual crop of ill-advised cross-dressing – although the hirsute chap in a hard-hat and 80s meringue wedding dress really carried it off - through lots of 'character' dressing to fit a particular district (pirates, cowboys, toffs, cyber warriors etc) and the default setting so quirky/draft/ironic. This latter category included: a set of teletubbies, a backpack with a cornfield on it and a pop-up Theresa May head, and a group of a dozen blokes who were actually wearing their tents. I'm already planning what D and I might wear next year...  
 

Coda

Boomtown was two weeks ago; this Bank Holiday weekend we had our final festival hurrah for the summer, with a nearby village beer festival. Again it was a chance for visitors to use our house as a base and venture out to party. We were pretty lightweight compared to our previous extravagances, although our livers might not agree right now. This summer's glitter-bug reached new heights though, with an unexpected Glitter Fairy distributing shiny stuff to anyone in range. Even the pub dogs ended up with glittery backs. 

If – as sometimes happens – we only get to one festival, by choice it would be WOMAD (short for World Of Music Arts and Dance). This is partly for the vibe, which is friendly, if a little worthy in places, but mainly for the music, which is always extraordinary and massively varied.

This year WOMAD's main arena area had a new layout, which we observed on first entering from the (considerable) heights of the (also new) big wheel. The stages form a fat crescent separated by stalls and eating/drinking establishments, each stage angled so its sound doesn't interfere with adjacent ones. About half of them are open air, half in large tents. On Friday we managed to work our way round the stages in a clockwise direction, kicking off the festival with a performance by the New York Theremin Society in a tent set up to have the best sound quality possible in a field, which I refer to as the Aural Sex or Sonic Attack tent (depending on on who's playing in it). We then caught another couple of acts, both good and very different (Brazilian jazz and Sicilian trancey folk) before approaching the main stage where the beat caught my feet and did not let go for the whole set of mambo-anarchists Orkesta Mendoza.

Back to a stage we'd already visited for more jazz, this time African influenced then into the Siam tent (always our favourite place) where we had a psychedelic experience courtesy of masked Swedish weirdoes Goat, then a surprisingly chilled Greek experience courtesy of Xoas (one member of whom played a set of pipes which appeared to have been made from a whole goat, aptly enough) and finally some chilled jazz from one of the members of Dave's favourite band, Snarky Puppy. (This used up my quotient of jazz acceptence for the weekend.)

Saturday we blew the cobwebs out with the Dhol Blasters. They were playing in the Arboretum; WOMAD has addition stages, art installations, activities and random musical instruments scattered through the manicured woodland outside the main arena area, something few festivals can boast of. From there to the Siam tent for one of my festival highlights. I first heard Hannah Peel a few weeks ago on Six Music, and she stopped me in my tracks. My responses to music tend to be based on rhythm – I'm all about the dance – but something about her ethereal synthetic sounds married with the surprisingly subtle wind instruments of Tubular Brass (who do what it says on the tin: they're a brass band who play Tubular Bells) speaks to something else deep inside me. Before the band played their signature track she played most of her upcoming album 'Journey to Cassiopeia' and, at the risk of sounding pretentious, the music pierced my soul and flooded it with cosmic light. I stood there with tears of rapture streaming down my face, my mind well and truly blow (and no, I was not under the influence of anything more mind-altering than a pint of real ale). The only problem with this transcendental experience was that it spoiled me for the next few acts – an African super-band and some tech trance in the Aural Sex tent that D blissed out to but I, having used up all my bliss, couldn't connect with, and so went to a dance workshop instead.

As evening – and rain – fell we left the main arena, passing an outing of wizards from the Unseen University, complete with utterly ridiculous beards and pointy hats. We headed for 'Drink the World' (as we call it), which is a wine bar opposite the 'Taste The World' stage, that being where artists talk about music and food and cook a favourite dish live on stage - another unique WOMAD thing I suspect. Over a bottle of Tasmanian fizz we discussed our evening plans: originally we'd been up for seeing Afro-Celt Sound system (who we've seen before) and Toots and the Maytals (who we hope to see at a later festival) but the rain was setting in, so instead we decamped to Molly's Bar.

Molly's is actually yet another stage (WOMAD has a lot of stages – great for choice but you always miss a lot!) but is undercover with its own bar, and from about 9pm it's one huge party. If you have been overdosing on worthiness and/or bliss, Molly's will bring you back down to earth and I kind of needed that. This Saturday night was enlivened by the unreconstructed blues rock outfit Johnny Cage and the Voodoo Groove – who had ::sigh:: semi-naked female dancers, though in fairness half the blokes in the band had removed their shirts by they end of the set – and a favourite local band who we've seen many times, Smerin's Anti-Social Club. I was in the mood for gin – and had some on me as it happens - but as Molly's only had crap tonic I braved the rain to visit the adjacent 'Lunched Out Lane' (named after the 'Lunched Out Lizards' cafe, where chai and dub is available 24 hours a day) and purchased a summer cooler smoothie, with added guarana for energy, then added my gin to that. We partied hard and stayed up late.

We didn't get up that early on Sunday. While Dave went in search of his usual WOMAD breakfast of kedgeree from the Goan Fish Curry stall I lounged around the tent and listened to Radio Womad to get an idea of what bands were coming up. We started with some science because there's even a tent for that in the Arboretum (so perhaps it should be WOMADS); we found out more about theremins, and though only the kids in the audience actually got to play them, Dave asked several questions, and now wants one of his own.

Thence to watch the Taiko drummers, where Dave managed to fall asleep, which was no mean feat considering how loud they are. We then drifted around in what had turned into a lovely day, until a shower had us running for the Siam tent where we caught the second half of a performance by the Whirling Dervishes of Damascus. Later, also there, we saw the highlight of the day, a band called '!!!' (pronounced chuk-chuk-chuk) who are actually from New York, and are a bit like Talking Heads with a lot of added profanity, and funk; at one point the lead singer lost his radio mic down his underpants and had to get a roadie to bring a replacement. During their gig we noticed that a change that had come over the penguin-on-a-stick (WOMAD, not being covered by TV or massively crowed, isn't a place for ostentatious flags, but the penguin is there every year, on his stick) – he had obviously enjoyed the dervishes as he now had a skirt made out of paper napkins and had had his stick adapted to allow him to whirl, or at least twirl.

As the evening was fine we returned to Drink the World, and did in fact drink their last bottle of Tasmanian fizz. As an added bonus, the Spooky Men's Chorale were doing a cookery demo on the 'Taste the World' stage next door. We've seen this Australian close irony group (that's close harmony singing, with irony; lots of irony) many times but to see them cook was … quite something. As the evening drew on we found ourselves back in Molly's, where we finished the festival with a brilliant set from the Ska Vengers (Indian ska with a social conscience – only at WOMAD!).

Not that the festival was finished with us … we awoke deep in the night to the sound of a rousing chorus of Bohemian Rhapsody, as sung by several hundred drunk people in nearby Molly's bar, just before the music stopped. Because this was WOMAD, they were all singing in tune. And because this was WOMAD various campers joined in from their tents, including us.

weather, fashion and culinary notes

We made great use of D's real-time rain radar app, and stayed dry through various sharp but brief showers until Saturday night, when the site developed avenues of Festival Mud (a variation on type 4, for those familiar with my Taxonomy of Mud from Plokta). It mainly dried out on Sunday.

Food news: Halloumi is the new falafel. Pretty much every stall did an 'add Halloumi' option, with one veggie-burger stall advising punters to 'Join the Hallouminati'. I even had Halloumi curry.

Fashion news: Sparkly is IN. I'm generally a fan of sparkly, though I can't help thinking that those men who went for glitter beards regretted their decisions later. Also, while I defend a man's right to wear what he wants, very few men – hell, very few people of any gender – can carry off sparkly fish-scale leggings.